French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he will discuss every possibility of extending its nuclear arsenal to protect its European allies.
His statement has come at a time when NATO and EU members are growing increasingly worried that the United States under President Donald Trump wouldn’t come to their defence.
Last month, Germany’s chancellor-designate, Friedrich Merz, said that “Britain and France could extend their nuclear protection to Germany.”
In a speech late Wednesday evening, Macron said that he was open to extending his country’s nuclear umbrella.
“In response to the historic appeal by the future German chancellor, I have decided to open a strategic debate on protecting our allies on the European continent through a nuclear deterrent,” he told reporters.
The president said that people in France were “legitimately worried” about the “new era” under Trump. “I want to believe that the United States will stay by our side, but we have to be prepared for that not to be the case,” he said.
Trump, who was elected on the “America first slogan, “has asked his European allies to increase their defence spending.”
He further parted ways with NATO countries by refusing to unconditionally back Ukraine against Russia and instead opted to initiate directly with Moscow.
Trump’s radical departure from the policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden, has raised alarm bells in EU countries to question whether they could rely on Washington for their defence.
“Europe faces a clear and present danger on a scale that none of us has seen in our adult lifetime,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote in a letter to the bloc’s member states on Tuesday.
The US president has stressed that it was his priority to broker a ceasefire between Moscow and Kiev and to prevent the conflict from spiralling into a full-scale war between nuclear powers.
During a heated verbal spat in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump accused Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of “gambling with World War III.”
Also read: How Trump-Zelensky spat threatens the world
Meanwhile, after Trump’s rejection of sending aid to Ukraine, Russia has accused NATO of sabre-rattling and said the EU is risking dangerous escalation by supplying the weapons to Ukraine.
“We believe that nuclear weapons are the instruments of deterring and preventing a nuclear war. That is how we approach this issue,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last year. “We will do everything to avoid a confrontation,” he said.
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